Calling him “The Smart Shepherd,” Lisa Miller profiles Pastor Tim Keller, whose recent book The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism hits bookstores everywhere this week. Excerpt:
Keller started Redeemer 17 years ago in a small rented church on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Now he preaches five times on Sundays, shuttling between three different rented venues and reaching more than 5,000 people each week (5,000 also download his sermon online). A recent sermon is taken from the Book of Job, and its message is unrelentingly grim. There’s no pat “I’m OK, you’re OK” theology here. Peppering his discussion with quotations from The New York Times Book Review and the British moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, Keller promises that human suffering is inexplicable and that it will break you…..Keller is a pastor for people who like their Christianity straight up.
Read the whole thing. Keller reflected on some of Miller’s statements in a recent correspondence with Ed Stetzer (the comparison to C.S. Lewis, to Rick Warren, his supposed belief in evolution).
Related: My Introduction to Keller’s book.